Reading without Reading

This weekend I talked with Julia and Joe, a couple who are in my cultural studies class, about work scheduling. Both have been in grad school for a couple more years than me, and I'm always impressed by how well prepared they come to class - appearing to have good notes on the readings, often having articulated positions on what they think are the key themes for the week, etc. Therefore, I was quite surprised when they both said they would usually end school work by 5 or 6 each night! I haven't even been able to attain my goal of ending work at 9 on weeknight.

How was this possible? Were they both just extraordinary quick readers? I think I found part of the answer as Joe explained to me his approach to reading: don't read every word! At least that was his take on most reading assignments. He said that he reads things quickly, somewhere between skimming and reading, marking the pages up a good bit, then he goes back at least a day later and reconstructs the arguments through an outline.

This approach might not work with philosophical work where the meaning of key terms and turns will be lost without very careful sensitive reading (and probably still will be in that case). But as regards most of the cultural studies academic articles I've been assigned lately, this seems like a perfect approach. Not just for its time efficiency, but because I think I'll actually end up remembering and taking more away from the articles choosing to put more time into constructing my own outlines of them rather than giving them more sentence-caressing readings. On a later post, I'll talk about how I differentiate the educational goals of knowledge, understanding and voice. Joe's approach I think will get me towards "voice," which is the goal I care about most.